This is a mostly good product with one major flaw: For low-temperature steeps (greens, primarily) the unit’s auto shut-off function kicks in before the target temperature is reached. At which point you can only turn it back on and select your preset all over again.

I contacted David’s Tea about this and ended up with a shoulder-shrugging recommendation to “wait a few minutes” between my water boiling and activating the thermometer.

Not only does this make clear that they didn’t consider this possibility when designing it, it also defeats a lot of the product’s purpose—I bought this so I could boil my water and then forget about it until the thermometer beeped, NOT so I could boil my water and then count the minutes and then guess whether or not I waited long enough for my water to get close enough to the target temperature to accommodate the un-changeable auto shut-off time.

Jimbo122,
It appears you’ve found an application that the designers of this thermometer/timer did not anticipate – waiting until larger quantities of water cool sufficiently for green teas.

Perhaps in the next model they’ll consider adding either an adjustable auto shut-off, or the ability to turn off the auto shut-off mode.

Other possible solutions for green teas with the current model might be:
– to not heat water to boiling as it’ll take longer to cool to green tea temperatures
– to use a smaller cup/mug of water that would cool off to the desired temperature before the timer/thermometer times out.

I haven’t had this issue since I mostly drink black and pu-erh teas.

Despite the above, this is a remarkable inexpensive device that combines a fast-reading accurate digital thermometer and a timer. Most thermometers only models cost at least as much.

Comments

Jimbo122,
It appears you’ve found an application that the designers of this thermometer/timer did not anticipate – waiting until larger quantities of water cool sufficiently for green teas.

Perhaps in the next model they’ll consider adding either an adjustable auto shut-off, or the ability to turn off the auto shut-off mode.

Other possible solutions for green teas with the current model might be:
– to not heat water to boiling as it’ll take longer to cool to green tea temperatures
– to use a smaller cup/mug of water that would cool off to the desired temperature before the timer/thermometer times out.

I haven’t had this issue since I mostly drink black and pu-erh teas.

Despite the above, this is a remarkable inexpensive device that combines a fast-reading accurate digital thermometer and a timer. Most thermometers only models cost at least as much.